The present invention relates to a thin-film transistor of a liquid crystal display and, more particularly, to a thin-film transistor having a gate including a double-layered metal structure and a method of making such a double-layered metal gate.
An LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) includes a switching device as a driving element, and a pixel-arranged matrix structure having transparent or light-reflecting pixel electrodes as its basic units. The switching device is a thin-film transistor having gate, source and drain regions.
The gate of the thin-film transistor is sometimes made of aluminum to reduce its wiring resistance, but an aluminum gate may cause defects such as hillock.
One alternative to using pure aluminum to form a gate, is to use an aluminum alloy to prevent the hillock problem. However, the use of an aluminum alloy such as AlTa in which diffusion of Aluminum atoms is prevented by adding a small amount of are fractory metal such as Ta, causes the gate to be electrically and chemically unstable.
Another alternative is to form a double-layered metal gate, i.e., molybdenum-coated aluminum gate, to overcome the problem of the hillock.
One such prior art double-layered metal gate is shown in FIGS. 1 and 2A-2F. FIG. 1 is a top plan view of a prior art thin-film transistor and FIGS. 2A-2F are cross-sectional views of FIG. 1 along line Xxe2x80x94X.
To fabricate a double-layered gate, metals such as aluminum and molybdenum are sequentially deposited, followed by a patterning process carried out via photolithography to form resulting metal films which have the same width. Although the double-layered gate is desirable to overcome the problem of hillock, the resulting deposited metal films forming the double-layered gate are so thick that a severe single step is created by a thickness difference between the metal films and a substrate, thereby causing a single step difference between the substrate and the double-layered gate which deteriorates the step coverage of a later formed gate oxide layer. The source and drain regions formed on the gate oxide layer may have disconnections between areas of the source and drain regions which are overlapped and non-overlapped with the gate, or electrically exhibit short circuits as a result of contact with the gate.
In such a method of forming the gate, each of the metal layers of Al and Mo form a clad structure as seen in FIGS. 2A-2F.
FIGS. 2A through 2F are diagrams illustrating the process for fabricating a thin-film transistor of FIG. 1. Referring to FIG. 2A, aluminum is deposited on, a substrate 11 to form a first metal layer 13. Then a second metal layer 15 is formed so as to completely cover the first metal layer 13 to define a clad structure seen in FIG. 2B. The second metal layer 15 is formed by depositing Mo so as to completely cover the first metal layer 13.
Thus, the first and second metal layers 13 and 15 form a gate having a double-layered metal structure in a clad arrangement. The clad structure defines a single step difference between the gate structure and the substrate 11.
A gate insulating film 17 is then formed over the gate electrode clad structure formed by the first and second metal layers 13, 15. A semiconductor layer 19 is then formed by deposition and etching on the gate electrode insulating film 17. Then a contact layer 21 is formed by deposition and etching to cover the semiconductor layer as seen in FIG. 2C.
Then an electrode layer 23 is formed on the contact layer 21 by deposition and etching. The electrode layer 23 and the contact layer 21 are further etched to form a channel region so as to separate the contact layer 21 and electrode layer 23 into two separate electrodes as seen in FIG. 2D.
An electrode insulating film 25 is then deposited on the electrode layer 23 and in the channel region located between the two separate electrodes formed by the electrode layer 23. The electrode insulating film 25 is etched to form a contact hole 27 therein as seen in FIG. 2E.
Finally, a transparent electrode such as a pixel electrode 29 is formed by deposition and etching on the electrode insulating film 25 and to fill the hole 27 in the electrode insulating film 25 such that the pixel electrode 29 is electrically connected to one of the two electrodes (source and drain) formed by the electrode layer 23.
The clad structure of the gate electrode formed by the first metal layer 13 and the second metal layer 15 experiences many problems. With the clad structure shown in FIGS. 2A-2F, hillock may be formed on either side of the single step difference between the gate electrode and substrate. In addition, the step coverage of later formed layers is decreased and the source and drain regions formed on the gate oxide layer may have disconnections between areas of the source and drain regions which are overlapped and non-overlapped with the gate or electrically exhibit short circuits as a result of contact with the gate.
In another conventional thin-film transistor shown in FIG. 3, a substrate 31 has an inner gate electrode 34 includes a first metal layer 34a consisting of Al and a second metal layer 34b consisting of a Mo layer. The first and second metal layers 34a, 34b are formed such that there is only a single step difference between the gate electrode 34 and the substrate 31 as a result of the first and second metal layers 34a, 34b having substantially the same width.
An outer gate electrode 35 is formed on the inner gate electrode 34 so as to completely cover the first and second metal layers 34a, 34b. The outer gate electrode 35 and the inner gate electrode 34 form a gate electrode 32.
The gate electrode 32 is covered by a first gate insulating film 36 to protect the gate electrode 32. Then a second gate insulating film 37 is formed to cover the first gate insulating film 36. The second gate insulating film 37 has a semiconductor layer 38 formed thereon. An insulating layer 39 is formed and etched so as to be located in a channel region between later formed source and drain electrodes consisting of a contact layer 40 and an electrode layer 41. The contact layer 40 and the electrode layer 41 are etched to form a source electrode 42 and a drain electrode 43. A pixel electrode 44 is formed on the same surface as the source and drain electrodes 42, 43 and is electrically connected to the drain electrode 43.
Similar to the conventional device shown in FIGS. 1 and 2A-2F, the conventional thin-film transistor shown in FIG. 3 has a single step difference between the gate electrode 34 and the substrate 31 and experiences many of the same problems including hillock on both sides of the first metal layer 34a. To avoid the problem of hillock at both sides of the first metal layer 34a also experienced by the device shown in FIGS. 1-2F, the device of FIG. 3 must use a double-layered inner gate electrode 34, an outer gate electrode 35 and an oxidation film 36. Without the outer gate electrode 35 and the oxidation film 36, this structure would be similar to the structure shown in FIGS. 1-2F and experience all of the same problems experienced by the device of FIGS. 1-2F as described above.
Although such a structure shown in FIG. 3 may avoid the problem of hillock, it requires far more process steps and layers and increases the time and cost of manufacturing a thin-film transistor.
According to another method of forming the gate, each of the metal layers of Al and Mo form a double step difference with the substrate so as to improve the step coverage of the gate oxide layer.
An example of this method of forming a double metal layer gate structure is described in xe2x80x9cLow Cost, High Quality TFT-LCD Processxe2x80x9d, SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION DISPLAY EURO DISPLAY 96, Proceedings of the 16th International Display Research Conference, Birmingham, England, Oct. 1, 1996, pages 591-594. On page 592 of this publication, a method of forming a double metal gate structure includes the process of depositing two metal layers first and then patterning the two metal layers to thereby eliminate an additional photoresist step. The first metal layer consists of an Al alloy and the second layer consists of Cr.
However, with this method, process difficulties during the one step photoresist process for forming the double metal layer gate resulted in the top layer being wider than the bottom layer causing an overhang condition in which the top layer overhangs the bottom layer. This difficulty may result in poor step coverage and disconnection. This problem was solved by using a three-step etching process in which the photoresist had to be baked before each of the three etching steps to avoid lift-off or removal of the photoresist during etching. This three-step etching process and required baking of the photoresist significantly increases the complexity and steps of the gate forming method.
These and other elements, features, and advantages of the preferred embodiments of the present invention will be apparent from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments of the present invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.
To overcome the problems discussed above, the preferred embodiments of the present invention provide a thin-film transistor which overcomes the problems of the prior art devices described above.
More specifically, the preferred embodiments of the present invention, provide a thin-film transistor which prevents a hillock and deterioration of step coverage of a later formed gate oxide layer on a double metal layer gate.
The preferred embodiments of the present invention also provide a method of fabricating a thin-film transistor that avoids the problems of the prior art and simplifies the process for forming a double metal layer gate.
Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objectives and other advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by the structure particularly pointed out in the written description and claims hereof, as well as, the appended drawings.
To achieve these and other advantages and in accordance with the purpose of the preferred embodiments of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, a thin-film transistor preferably comprises a substrate, and a gate including a double-layered structure of first and second metal layers disposed on the substrate, the first metal layer comprising a material which exhibits a tensile stress and the second metal layer which exhibits a compressive stress, the first metal layer being wider than the second metal layer so as to form a double step difference between the gate electrode and the substrate.
In a further preferred embodiment, the first metal layer comprises Al and the second metal layer comprises Mo.
In other preferred embodiments, the second metal layer may comprise a Mo alloy, MoW, MoTa, MoNb or other suitable material.
According to another preferred embodiment of the present invention, a thin-film transistor comprises a substrate, and agate including a double-layered structure of first and second metal layers disposed on the substrate, the first metal layer comprising a material exhibiting tensile stress and the second metal layer comprising material exhibiting compressive stress, the first metal layer being wider than the second metal layer by about 1 to 4 xcexcm.
According to yet another preferred embodiment of the present invention, a method of making such a thin-film transistor preferably comprises the steps of: depositing a first metal layer comprising a material exhibiting tensile stress on a substrate, depositing a second metal layer exhibiting compressive stress on the first metal layer; patterning the second metal layer and the first metal layer such that the first metal layer is wider than the second metal layer.
These and other elements, features, and advantages of the preferred embodiments of the present invention will be apparent from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments of the present invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.